“This is not just any crime. This is a bioengineered chimera—an organism that’s killed an entire shuttle crew. And it came from your lab.”

“My researchers direct their own projects. I don’t interfere. I’m a scientist myself, Dr. McCallum, and I know that scientists work best when allowed complete independence. The freedom to indulge their curiosity. Whatever Helen did was her business.”

“Why study Archaeons? What was she hoping to find?”

He turned to face forward, and they saw only the back of his head, with its silvery sweep of hair. “Knowledge is always useful. At first we may not recognize its value. For instance, what benefit is there to knowing the reproductive habits of the sea slug?

Then we learn about all the valuable hormones we can extract from that lowly sea slug. And suddenly, its reproduction is of utmost importance.”

“And what’s the importance of Archaeons?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it? That’s what we do here. Study an organism until we learn its usefulness.” He pointed toward his research facility, now shrouded in mist. “You’ll notice it’s by sea. All my buildings are by the sea. It’s my oil field. That’s where I look for the next new cancer drug, the next miracle cure. It makes perfect sense to look there, because that’s where we come from. Our birthplace. All life comes from the sea.”

“You haven’t answered my question. Is there a commercial value for Archaeons?”

“That remains to be seen.”

“And why send them into space? Was there something she discovered on those KC-135 flights? Something to do with weightlessness?”

Gabriel rolled down his window and signaled to the men. The back doors swung open. “Please step out now.”

“Wait,” said Jack. “Where is Helen Koenig?”

“I haven’t heard from her since she resigned.”

“Why did she order her own cell cultures incinerated?” Jack and Gordon were hauled out of the backseat and shoved toward their rental car.

“What was she afraid of?” Jack yelled.

Gabriel did not answer. His car window rolled shut, and his face disappeared behind the shield of tinted glass.

August 18

Luther vented the last air in the crew lock to space and opened the EVA hatch. “I’ll go first,” he said. “You take it slow. It’s the first time out.”

That first glimpse of the emptiness beyond made Emma grasp the edge of the hatchway in panic. She knew the sensation was common, and that it would pass. That brief paralysis of fear gripped almost everyone on their first spacewalk. The mind had trouble accepting the vastness of space, the absence of up or down.

Millions of years of evolution had imprinted in the human brain the terror of falling, and this was what Emma now struggled to overcome.

Every instinct told her that if she released her grip, if she ventured out the hatchway, she would plummet, shrieking, in an endless fall. On a rational level, she knew this would not happen.

She was connected to the crew lock by her tether. If that tether broke, she could use her SAFER jet pack to propel herself back to the station.

It would take an unlikely series of independent events to cause a catastrophe.

Yet that is exactly what has happened to this station, she thought.

Mishap after mishap. Their own Titanic in space. She could not shake the premonition of yet another disaster.

Already they had been forced to violate protocol. Instead of the usual overnight camp-out at reduced air pressures, they had spent only four hours in the air lock. Theoretically, it should be long enough to prevent the bends, but any change in normal procedures added an element of risk.

She took a few deep breaths and felt the paralysis begin to melt away.

“How ya doing?” she heard Luther ask over her comm-unit.

“I’m just … taking a minute to enjoy the view,” she said.

“No problems?”

“No. I’m A-OK.” She released her grip and floated out of the hatch.

Diana is dying, Griggs stared with mounting bitterness at the closed-circuit TV monitors showing Luther and Emma at work outside the station.

Drones, he thought. Obedient robots, leaping at Houston’s command. For so many years, he, too, had been a drone. Only now did he understand his position in the greater scheme of things. He, and everyone else, were disposable. On-orbit replacement units whose real function was to maintain NASA’s glorious hardware. We may all be dying up here, but yes, sir, we’ll keep the place in shipshape order.

They could count him out. NASA had betrayed him, had betrayed all of them. Let Watson and Ames play the good little soldiers, he would have no more of it.

Diana was all he cared about.

He left the hab and headed toward the Russian end of the station.

Slipping under the plastic sheeting draped over the hatchway, he entered the RSM. He didn’t bother to put on his mask or goggles, what difference did it make? They were all going to die.

Diana was strapped to the treatment board. Her eyes were swollen, the lids puffy. Her abdomen, once so flat and firm, now bloated. Filled with eggs, he thought. He pictured them growing inside her, expanding beneath that pale tent of skin.

Gently he touched her cheek. She opened her blood-streaked eyes and struggled to focus on his face.

“It’s me,” he whispered. He saw that she was trying to free her hand from the wrist restraint. He clasped her hand in his. “You need to keep your arm still, Diana. For the IV.”

“I can’t see you.” She gave a sob. “I can’t see anything.”

“I’m here. I’m right with you.”

“I don’t want to die this way.” He blinked away tears and started to say something, false reassurance that she would not die, that he would not let her.

But the words wouldn’t come. They had always been truthful with each other, he would not lie to her now. So he said nothing.

She said, “I never thought…”

“What?” he prompted gently.

“That this is … how it would happen. No chance to play the hero. Just sick and useless.” She gave a laugh, then grimaced in pain. “Not my idea of going out … in a blaze of glory.” A blaze of glory. That was how every astronaut imagined it would be to die in space. A brief moment of terror, and then the quick demise. Sudden decompression or fire.

Never had they imagined a death like this, a slow and painful ebbing away as one’s is consumed and digested by another life-form. Abandoned by the ground. Quietly sacrificed to the greater good of mankind.

Expendable. He could accept it for himself, but he could not accept Diana’s expendability. He could not accept the fact he was about to lose her.

It was hard to believe that on the first day they’d met, during training at JSC, he had thought her cold and forbidding, an icy blonde with too much confidence. Her British accent had put him off as well, because it made her sound so superior. It was crisp cultured compared to his Texas drawl. By the first week, they disliked each other so much they were scarcely speaking to each other.

By the third week, at Gordon Obie’s insistence, they’d reluctantly declared a truce.

By the eighth week, Griggs was showing up at her house. Just for a drink at first, two professionals reviewing their upcoming mission. Then the mission talk had given way to conversations of more personal nature.

Griggs’s unhappy marriage. The thousand and one interests he and Diana had in common. It all led, of course, to the inevitable.

They had concealed the affair from everyone at JSC. Only here, on the station, had their relationship become apparent to their colleagues. Had there been even a whiff of suspicion before this, Blankenship would have scrubbed them from the mission. Even in this modern day and age, an astronaut’s divorce was a black mark against him. And if that divorce had resulted from a liaison with another member of the corps—well, so much for any future flight assignments. Griggs would have been reduced to an invisible member of the corps, neither seen nor heard.